From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
This crisis is rooted in the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for accomplishment and success. Recent scientific findings make it clear that this couldn't be less true. Performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal.
You don't have to choose a business that's going to drown you, be a treadmill, or suck you underneath. You can start slow, make a bit of money and then double down. You don't have to risk it all at the beginning.
At WeWork, we believe creators are anyone that's pursuing their passions and contributing to a mission. You may be an artist who is working on an innovative new project, a freelance software engineer providing client services or a director of HR at a Fortune 500 company that's trying to build a dynamic work environment for employees – regardless of your company size, title or function, you are working towards creating meaning, intention and purpose within your life.
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of hiring a table of yes-men. This is great for ego, bad for business. You need to hire people who are smarter or more experienced than you in those specific roles. They may often challenge you and re-structure your thoughts, but this is important for good governance.
A speculative bubble exists when the price of something does not equal its market fundamentals for some period of time for reasons other than random shocks. [Fundamental] is usually argued to be a long-run equilibrium consistent with a general equilibrium
Cross-training stands as a key mechanism to balance mastery and specialisation with flexibility and motivation. However, this doesn't mean that you should cross-train every employee in every task. Such an approach would invariably lead to mediocrity.
I made a principled decision that none of my wealth will be passed on as inheritance, that my capital will work for philanthropic causes. In other words, philanthropy is the reason I make money.
I'm 65 years old, and one of the things that amazes me is the number of people who work to get to a certain level of success in showbusiness, and then quit to go play golf?! There is nothing else I would want to do in this world.
In today's climate, and over the past 5-7 years, people have been building financial arbitrage machines not actual companies. Most people's behaviour is more predicated towards raising the next round of financing rather than building towards a profitable company. We're going to have a massive crash and 90% of the people will go back to working at Bank of America, Chase, GE and companies like that- and the people who are good enough will continue to build businesses.
Bureaucracy may be humankind's most important innovation. Whether it's scientific innovation, the invention of the steam engine, locomotive, electric-motor, semi-conductor or antibiotics, none of these would have been possible without the understanding of how to work precisely and repeatably at scale; bureaucracy.
I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach for talent, you have to approach every individual and opportunity from a bespoke perspective.
We're taking capability from NASA that used to cost billions of dollars, and we're doing it for tens of millions of dollars. We want to learn that critical information necessary to develop those resources.